Tadashi
by ShadowPillow
Summary: The pain will never go away. Sometimes, it appears in flashes, glimpses – but it's always there, waiting.


A/N: I recently rewatched Big Hero 6 with my brother, and it seemed even better the second time (probably because I was on an airplane for the first and sound/screen quality isn't ideal there). Then, today I was messing around with my brother (trying to do the fistbump noise), and then suddenly this idea came to me. Had to hold it in my mind for a half hour car trip because I kept on wording the first part over and over in my mind, and got antsy whenever someone tried to talk to me. So, er, here's my first BH6 story.

I do not own Big Hero 6.

* * *

 **Tadashi**

* * *

It struck him at the strangest of times. A nostalgic, painful tug in his heart, a longing for what was missing, gone. A monster dwelling deep in the pit of his gut, slowly clawing its way out.

He had been with Baymax, an alert sent to his phone of a nearby break in at one of the city's main technology stores. It would be one of the team's first heroics, to go out and stop the bad guys. Apprehension and excitement both had mingled to create a sharp edgy eagerness, like free falling but better.

He turned to Baymax.

"Fist bump," he said, grinning at the robot. Baymax acquiesced, white cold plastic touching soft human skin in show of camaraderie.

"Ba-la-la-la-la-la-la!" The fists parted, an acted out explosion.

He paused, blank eyes staring at that white marshmallow hand. There was something –

 _Tadashi_ , his heart cried out.

A great weight suddenly lay on his chest, so heavy he could barely breathe. Gasping, he threw his shaking hand to his chest, to clutch at his smooth armor, to remove that painful feeling, to find nothing at his chest that would cause such a thing save for his weary, aching heart.

Then it passed. He smiled at Baymax, hand falling to his side.

"Let's get you suited up, alright?"

He gave the robot a friendly punch to his soft, inflated chest.

.

 _–(My brother)–_

.

Hiro Hamada was not a crybaby. He was not some lackadaisical teenager either, whining about his problems. He was not someone who would complain much about anything to anyone, in fact.

So when the crook who had been robbing the highest level consumer tech in town swung a punch at him, he barely made a whimper in response to the pain he felt as a fist crashed into his arm.

"Baymax!" he whispered urgently. "Up!"

His armor wasn't as suited to battle as the others'. Honey Lemon could create her concoctions, GoGo could beat them by mere speed alone, Wasabi had his sharp blades that were so dangerous he had to take care to _not_ cause injury, and Fred was a personality enough of his own without the fire-breathing, superjumping suit. Hiro's plain armor, however, was meant to be only enough to attach himself to Baymax's magnetic receptors and disguise his identity. It didn't have any real practical use.

That was the reason why he was the strategist of the group, a genius in invention and a genius in battle. He had won his bot fights with so much success for a reason.

But this was the first time they had actually gone out to stop petty crime. It wasn't going well.

He could see, from the air above the fight, that their suits just didn't match the context they were in. They were too powerful for this fistfight, and holding back did more damage than their full abilities were capable of.

"Fred," he said through the comm link he had set up earlier, "take Wasabi out of the field. Superjump out of there."

Both of them were far too potent weapons, with fire and laser swords. Honey Lemon and GoGo, at least, were nonlethal.

"GoGo," he now said, "you distract them, try to get them off their feet."

He heard a snarky, "Roger that," but he could see her, from his vantage point, doing as he said.

"And Honey Lemon," he said, "use the expansion foam to detain them."

After that, it was quick work. There hadn't been too many of them, and even though they had seemed like smart crooks, to have lasted so long, they were no match for the Big Hero 6.

Hiro smiled. Then the comm system crackled on again.

"Hey!" It was Fred's voice. "How come Wasabi and I didn't get to do anything?"

"Not that I'm complaining," Wasab was quick to say.

"We'll figure something out about that," Hiro promised. "Adapt your suits to do more than firebreathing and laser swords."

"But I like my firebreathing," Fred muttered quietly, but it was clearly intentional that it carried over the comms.

"Shut up, Fred," GoGo said. "Should we start heading out? I hear sirens."

Hiro was surprised to realize that he did too. The altitude usually didn't help carrying sounds. After a certain point, everything became more muted, as if the city existed in a separate bubble from him.

"Sure," he said. "Baymax and I will come get you. Fred, you think you can take Wasabi back?" Even as his spoke, he felt Baymax begin turning to alter his direction so that he could swoop down to grab the two members of his team.

"On it, captain," Fred's grinning voice said.

"Wait, wait, but I'm –"

Wasabi didn't get to finish before Fred took off, but Hiro thought he was going to mention his fear of heights again.

Right. He was also going to have to figure out a way around that too.

Baymax reached the ground. Hiro unclicked his knees from the magnetic receptors, wincing as he realized just how loud the sirens sounded from here.

"Thanks, buddy," he told the robot. GoGo and Honey Lemon rushed over to him.

"Let's _go_ ," GoGo said, eyes darting around nervously. "The cops'll arrive any moment now." Honey Lemon nodded, proving just how much she wanted to avoid that possibility.

Except for Hiro, the Big Hero 6 were largely composed of nerds who had no experience getting on the wrong side of the law, and had a distinct preference to never gain such experience.

"Climb on," Hiro said, grinning, pointing them graciously towards Baymax's back. They were quick enough to reach over and attach themselves to the robot, and Hiro was just about to rejoin them when his eyes strayed over to the crooks they had detained.

 _Black hair, a baseball cap, familiar brown eyes –_

A jolt of _something_ coursed through his body. He stared wide-eyed at one of the masses of foam and boy, wishing, _hoping_ –

But then he shook his head and turned away, hopping onto Baymax and locking in the magnets.

"Come on, Baymax," he muttered, "Let's go."

 _What's wrong with me?_

Baymax didn't move.

"Hiro, are you okay?" An innocent question, emotion somehow conveyed despite the varied flat tones.

The sirens grew louder.

" _Go_ ," he said more insistently, and thought it was only because of the fear and urgency in his voice that Baymax obeyed.

.

 _–(Your friends)–_

.

GoGo wasn't happy with him.

"What _was_ that?" she demanded, animated expressions acted out with her hand despite a practiced nonchalance on her face, for once without gum chewing visibly.

"I- I–" he stammered, remembering how they had all confronted him after he had tried to get Callaghan killed. How they had helped him. "It's nothing," he said, eyes downcast, feeling guilty.

"Your neurotransmitter levels indicate that you are sad," Baymax's level voice said. Hiro looked up sharply. Baymax blinked innocently.

"See?" GoGo seethed. "It's not _nothing_."

"Hiro," Honey Lemon said, her accent rolling the _r_ in his name. "You can tell us what's wrong."

He glanced at his feet.

"It's really nothing," he muttered forlornly. He kicked a rock. "I really… I just feel weird, that's all."

He wished he hadn't asked Fred to go on before them. Now he was left with this two girls and Baymax, without the distraction or levity that Fred could have offered. This was like a stifling interrogation room without reprieve.

"Weird?" Honey Lemon asked gently.

Hiro entertained himself by drawing shapes in the gravel with the toe end of his shoe.

"Yeah, weird," he said. "I'll probably feel better tomorrow."

GoGo looked at him, unconvinced. She glanced at Baymax, but when he didn't say anything, she sighed defeatedly.

"Alright," she conceded, "We'll let you have your day. But!" She scowled at him. "If you're not feeling better by tomorrow, then we're kicking the door down to your place, alright?"

Hiro nodded, and couldn't help but feel grateful, even though it would be unneeded. He _would_ feel better by tomorrow. This… this painful feeling would disappear.

Right?

.

 _–(I didn't really believe it)–_

.

He woke up breathing heavily. A nightmare.

"Hiro?" Baymax's voice drifted across the room, robotic, from Tadashi's corner. "Are you alright?"

Hiro didn't answer. He stared at the unmade bed on the other side of the room, images of a great flash of red and white running through his mind. A baseball cap, left behind. The afterimage of a boy running into a building, the debris pushing his body _back, back, back into the white flame –_

He heard a strange sniffling noise, and when his hand touched his face to investigate, discovered that his cheeks were wet with salt and water. He stared at his hand in a sort of stunned disbelief, mind struggling to understand.

And suddenly he knew. This wasn't going away.

 _Tadashi_ , he thought, fresh tears arising anew from the name, the thought, the memory of his older brother. _I_ …

 _I wish you were still here._

The feeling that had struck him so suddenly, so strangely, was grief for his older brother's death.


End file.
